kingtycoon | (no subject) (Reply)

On Thursday young Agatha turned 15 and we had a nice time. Tommy's for dinner, as is tradition, a pleasant walk, a decent evening. She arranged to go skating with her friends on Saturday after Art school as her party — it was nice & she had a nice time, I'm told. From me she got a giant isopod pillow and a bunch of batman comics. She's been a strong devotee of the show Gotham for a while now and is deep into batman but knows well enough that Superman is superior and I'll brook no contradiction. And as well that Batman & Superman are Best Friends and it's dumb that they're always depicted as fighting. Anyhow, she's 15 now which is... Proper. Actually. It's sensible & she's a good & sensible teenaged kid. Says she'll try and find a job over the summer. I don't know how that will go — competing with the college kids, it's tough out there for grown people — but jobs.

I think about my first job and how it's kind of damaged my sensibilities and altered my mentality in a significant way. They say that the first job is the one that sets the tone & I got a shitty deal on that. I think about getting side jobs doing @ home tech support & the like & contracting it out to her — just to see what it would be to have an easy job that pays pretty good. But then she'd also have the experience of having a scammy dad who's antics only seem helpful but in the long run make problems.

Eh. Who's to say. 15! So I can take my hands off the wheel a bit more, and a bit more and a bit more. Soon, she'll do all of it.

Anyhow. My brother looks like he's not going to be married anymore. I was thinking about this as my mom tried to gossip with me about it, driving around having had a dinner... It was this whole thing. I don't know — she invited us over to her house for dinner so we went, but it was dumb — like the lyft tried to pick me up in the wrong place and I had to buy a second one and then it's always a haul to her house & then she didn't make dinner but wanted to go out. My old man was obstinate & cantankerous about walking places, all macho about it even though he can't really walk and should get help. We went home and she wants to gossip about Sam's marriage and I... am happy for him? It's not good to be married if you don't like it. And me, I can't imagine liking it, really. But I speculate about how it is that once you have this little kid. To me, and I imagine to him — you walk through life, open doors & close them, you can have attachments but they're insubstantial. A baby though. Well, suddenly you have that handle that you can be gripped by and shaken, when you're not free and you're used to being it — it's a hard, hard thing. I was thinking about this when I got home & then Chicago called to freak out a little about that exact thing. About her ex jerking her around, about living the rest of her life in a town she doesn't want to live in, and how it's that handle, how having a kid means you're kind of over and trapped by the other person. It's tough & no fun at all to face. But then...

15. I go outside today & the time travel is done, without ceremony anymore, just automatically, but still it's a pain & a burden, but today the sky opens a little on the gray-ugly-waste and there's a feeling, slightly, of I can just go where I want, I could do anything. At work I feel, strongly, for the first time in a while, that I could just walk, stride on out and leave it behind. Even if you don't do that, it's really helpful to have the sense that you could.

I think back about how the train used to come by my old job, years ago, and how I just wanted to jump aboard and go anywhere — away. And little kid was little, and needed me. And still needs me, but less, and in less urgent ways. But that day is on the horizon, always something to look forward to.

My fear, in the end, is that that day will come and I'll just continue, changing nothing, keeping on in this mode. I hope not, I hope I've got the grit to go & do and be freed up and liberated.